George Will Trashes the Law-of-the-Sea Treaty

International agreements are not necessarily bad. There’s probably some sort of treaty about air traffic control rules as planes cross national borders, and even I can’t think of a reason to get worried about such a pact.

There they go again. Like those who say climate change is an emergency too obvious and urgent to allow for debate, some proponents of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a.k.a. the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), say arguments against it are nonexistent. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says any such arguments “no longer exist and truly cannot even be taken with a straight face.” …Clinton’s insufferable tone is not a reason for the necessary 34 senatorsto reject ratification. It is, however, a reason for enjoying their doing so. …For centuries there has been a law of the sea. There might be marginal benefits from LOST’s clarifications and procedures for resolving disputes arising from that law — although China and the nations involved in contentious disputes about the South China Sea have all ratified LOST, not that it seems to matter. But those hypothetical benefits are less important than LOST’s actual derogation of U.S. sovereignty by empowering a U.N. bureaucracy — the International Seabed Authority (ISA), based in Jamaica — to give or withhold permission for mining, and to transfer perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. wealth to whatever nation it deems deserving — “on the basis of equitable sharing criteria, taking into account the interests and needs of developing states, particularly the least developed and the land-locked among them.” Royalties paid by nations with the talent and will for extracting wealth from the seabed will go to nations that have neither, on the principle that what is extracted from 56 percent of the earth’s surface is, the United Nations insists, “the common heritage of mankind.” And never mind U.S. law, which says that wealth gained from the continental shelf — from which the ISA would seek royalty payments — is supposed to be held by the U.S. government for the benefit of the American people. …Donald Rumsfeld…opposes LOST because it “remains a sweeping power grab that could prove to be the largest mechanism for the worldwide redistribution of wealth in human history.” It “would regulate American citizens and businesses without being accountable politically to the American people.” Which makes it shameful that the Chamber of Commerce is campaigning for LOST through an organization with the Orwellian name the American Sovereignty Campaign. If the Navy supports LOST because the civilian leadership does, fine. But if the Navy thinks it cannot operate well without LOST, we need better admirals, not better treaties. Here is an alternative proposal for enhancing the lawfulness of the seas: Keep the money LOST would transfer to ISA, and use it to enlarge the Navy.

That’s a long excerpt, but that’s because the whole piece is worth reading.

But that’s a digression. Global governance is a very bad idea. It is pro-statism and anti-democratic. And in the case of LOST, it’s an excuse to redistribute money from America to the rest of the world.

6 Responses

I like that recognition of the Chamber of Commerce reality too. I was in a meeting last year and caused a commotion by saying that Career Pathways in K-12 would only work in a centrally planned and managed economy. And that those had a poor track record of producing prosperity.

The IBM exec across from me turned red and started sputtering how the Chamber of Commerce was for Career Pathways. I let that go but I do not think she appreciates how diminishing knowledge benefits established businesses.

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